Individuals

Whatever the financial means available to you we are dedicated to exploring every possibility to enable you to bring your case.

We are keenly aware that the greatest bar to accessing justice for most people is the prohibitive cost of litigation which entails not only funding your own legal costs but potentially having to pay the costs of the other party if your case does not succeed. The overall costs risk can often run into many tens of thousands of pounds.

If your means are extremely limited then you may be eligible for public funding, more commonly known as legal aid.

We have a contract with the Legal Aid Agency to provide legal services to individuals in public law and community law which cover the majority of the classes of cases we undertake in the human rights team.

If you are ineligible for legal aid and simply unable to afford to pay privately for representation and/or risk being forced to pay for the other parties legal costs then we will investigate other means of covering the costs risk for you.

These can include:

legal services insurance funding under an existing insurance policy (eg: household insurance) which may cover all of your costs for bringing certain types of cases.

Trade Union Funding.

Funding by public interest organisations such as the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.

Conditional Fee Agreements, otherwise known as “no-win, no-fee” where we will not charge you for our fees unless you win your case (when you can expect to recover your costs from the other party).

After the Event Insurance – which can sometimes be obtained to cover the risk of having to pay the other party’s costs.

The human rights team at Leigh Day prides itself as being at the forefront of developments in access to justice and in certain cases we may be able to investigate obtaining an order from the Court protecting you from having to pay the other party’s costs whatever the outcome of your case. Such an arrangement is known as a Protective Costs Order or PCO and Leigh Day has been instrumental in the development of these. A PCO may be available to you if your case:

(a) has considerable wider public importance; or
(b) relates specifically to an environmental issue.

Our lawyers will always investigate with you the funding possibilities available to you and will endeavour to put together a package which enables you to bring your case to Court.